Thursday, February 28, 2013

What? Pluto's Having a House Guest!

My post the other day about Pluto got me all fired up about the little planet. (Dwarf planet just isn't politically correct. I think it hurts his feelings.) So I did some further investigation into our distant friend. What I found out was that NASA has sent a probe to the icy world. Did you know that? I didn't... You would think a nerd such as myself would have known SOMETHING about this mission.

Well anyway, the mission is called "New Horizons" and the craft was launched on January 19th 2006. As an interesting side note, the probe is carrying some of the ashes of the man who discovered the planet, Clyde W. Tombaugh.

The cool thing about the mission is that it will be approaching Pluto in 2015. The probe will be at its closest point on July 14th 2015. From there, it will head on to the Kuiper Belt to explore that region of our solar system.

Here is a cool link to NASA and information about "New Horizons"
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/index.html

I'm looking forward to what they find out about the now defunct planet. Maybe they will have to change their mind and re-instate it's planetary status.


-Red
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Email Jeff at author@jeffjake.com


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